


The Decoy Princess

by 221b_hound



Series: Princess for a Day [3]
Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Bodyguard Hux, Dresses, Kylo Amidala, M/M, Protective Hux, alternative universe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-30
Updated: 2016-05-30
Packaged: 2018-07-11 02:08:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,012
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7021528
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/221b_hound/pseuds/221b_hound
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kylo Naberrie, born Ben Solo, lives a life of privilege on Naboo, still wrestling with darkness. But his personal guard, Hux, the refugee son of a bloody war criminal, understands Kylo better than anybody. When General Organa asks Kylo to make a public appearance of sorts, Kylo and Hux have a little fun with it in the spirit of the Royal Handmaidens, who would sometimes switch places with their queen.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Decoy Princess

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first Star Wars fanfic! Thank you, or curse you, BlackMorgan for drawing me into the Kylux whirlpool, and to Atlin Merrick for being such a superb enabler. Special thanks and the strewing of petals at the feet of BlackMorgan for her super quick beta and advice on the gown.
> 
> (Regular readers, I will always be writing Sherlock fic and will return to it shortly. I hope in the meantime you enjoy this little swim in another fandom ocean.)

Kylo stood in the archway of the balcony overlooking the garden which led down to the avenue, which led through the city of Theed and down to the river, where the Royal Palace, once his grandmother’s home, sat in marble splendour on the shore.

Today, he wore a simple headpiece: obsidian stones, interspersed with amethyst, made a circlet over his lustrous black hair, a sole amethyst of exceptional beauty resting on his high and noble brow, above those exquisite, intense brown eyes.

The sheer black chiffon layer of Kylo’s gown floated with the breeze, allowing the light to play over deep purple skirt flowing underneath. The black-and-silver bodice, open from throat to navel, bracketed Kylo’s sculpted musculature, a beauty emphasised by the night-black collar at this throat. A cloak fell from his broad shoulders, dappling purple-and-black with the shifting light, sweeping past his upper arms to the floor and pooling about his feet, which were shod in simple, formfitting black leather.

Hux wondered if he would ever stop looking at Kylo and thinking of him in these terms. _Lustrous. Exceptional. Noble. Exquisite. Sculpted. Broad. Beautiful._

Really, it was embarrassing how besotted he was with Kylo Naberrie, scion of the house of Amidala, nephew of the great Jedi Luke Skywalker, son of General Leia Organa and the Hero of the Alliance, Han Solo, and all round wastrel and brat.

 _He is not those things,_ Hux amended in the privacy of his head. _At least, he is not only those things. Whatever they say about him in the court and in the city. I know who he is. Even when he doesn’t know himself._

“Has my mother sent you?”

Kylo still looked out over Theed, his hands clasped behind his back.

“She did intercept me on my way here,” Hux confessed, stepping out of the shadows. He removed his cap and tucked it under his arm as he assumed parade rest.

“She’s not still under the impression you’re a good influence, is she?” Kylo turned and raised an eyebrow at him.

Hux snorted his opinion of that mad idea. “I’m pretty sure she gave that up as a lost cause the first time I was sent to fetch you from the music hall and ended up in the hothouse ornamental pond with a slug beetle down my shirt.”

Kylo’s solemn demeanour vanished entirely under a broad grin and a roar of laughter. “You yelled like you had a colo claw fish at your balls.”

Hux grimaced ruefully, but underneath that he was smiling too. “Yes, yes, the Naboo newbie was hilarious, with his belief that everything aquatic on this planet meant to eat him alive.” He strode up to Kylo, tossing his cap aside to leave his hands free to slip around Kylo’s thick waist and press his hands to the bare skin of Kylo’s back under the cloak.

“I will,” murmured Kylo, bending to kiss him, “Eat you alive.”

They kissed as though they both harboured ambitions to eat the other up with passion. Kylo held tight to Hux and then hefted him up from the floor. Hux, used to Kylo’s strong-arm playfulness, wrapped his legs around Kylo’s hips and took Kylo’s mouth in a demanding kiss.

Kylo giggled through the kiss, his big hands under Hux’s backside as he turned them around the tiled floor, a ridiculous dance. Hux took Kylo’s lower lip between his teeth and tugged gently on it, letting the plump perfection slide through his bite before soft-kissing his mouth again.

“Not if I eat you first,” promised Hux.

“So tell me,” said Kylo, not putting Hux down, “Why did my mother intercept you?”

“She wants you to go to the market today.”

“Ah, yes,” Kylo nodded solemnly, “ _Shopping_.” He let Hux down to the floor.

Hux tugged his uniform jacket straight. “Don’t be absurd. She says she wants you…”

“To be seen, out Among the People, doing Ordinary Things. Being an ordinary kind of princeling. Everyone will forget about my grandfather if they can see me picking among the fruit stalls in gowns that remind them of my grandmother.”

Kylo was pacing now, and Hux watched him. Kylo had these moods often – had done ever since Hux had known him. Had done, no doubt, since Kylo was old enough to pace. The son of heroes was twenty now, and as quick to brooding as he was to laughter, when he was getting into ludicrous kinds of trouble.

“Has it ever occurred to you,” said Hux, striving for distraction, “That _you_ were supposed to be a good influence on _me_?”

That made Kylo cease his pacing abruptly, head coming up to look sharply at Hux. He seemed to be considering that question closely.

“Am I?”

Hux met the earnest question with a clear-eyed gaze. “I think you saved my life,” he said. “I think if your mother had sent me for court martial for insubordination after I punched my commanding officer, instead of thinking I was exactly the kind of personal guard you needed, I’d have found a way to let the universe finish what it started in being rid of my family.”

Kylo slow-blinked, and a smile spread across his face, though not the playful grin. A softer expression.

“I sometimes wonder whether it’s my mother or my father who’s more of a maverick.”

_No love, that’s your Uncle Luke._

But Hux didn’t say it aloud. Kylo’s time with his uncle, and his decision to give up the Jedi training after the nightmare visions had only worsened were not the stuff of jokes. The darkness that Kylo carried in him had seemed only to flourish instead of diminish under his uncle’s strict tutelage, and Kylo had demanded, weeping, to come home before he became something much worse than a difficult child.

The whole terrible business with that bastard Snoke hadn’t helped either.

Hux knew these things about Kylo because General Organa had explained them.

“He needs a friend. I suspect you do, too,” she’d said, rescuing him from disgrace. “You came to us a refugee after your father died. I don’t know what Brendol Hux was to you, but I sense good in you. And nobody knows better than I do that the sins of the father don’t have to be the destiny of his children. I’ll give you this one chance, Sergeant Hux. Guard my boy. Be his friend, if you can. You don’t have to make up anything for your father’s sins – though I hope you’ll make up a little for your own.”

Hux – he’d abandoned his first name, Brendol, at the age of ten, after he’d understood what his father, his namesake, had done. Murderer of cadets; architect of cold blooded slaughter in the name of ‘natural selection’; a man who had, with that same justification, abandoned his family to the enemy in the hopes of escaping justice. Brendol Hux’s escape pod vanished in the flames of the exploding battleship instead, and those enemies the Commandant had thought in need of ‘weeding out’ gave the child Hux and his mother refuge.

Commandant Brendol Hux had been training his small boy to be just like him, and had died before the lessons had more than half taken. His family were granted amnesty as part of the Accord, and brought to Naboo to be free but under watchful eyes.

It was bad enough Hux looked like the infamous Commandant – red hair and green eyes and rounded jaw. It was bad enough the boy carried the fear that perhaps, after all, he was just like that butcher. Hux refused to carry the butcher’s name as well. He was Hux now, and only Hux. Perhaps one day he’d earn himself another name, his own name. When he knew he truly was not his father’s son.

Given how difficult a child he had been, that would take some doing. He’d grown to nineteen years of age, prickly and prone to anxiety. He’d enlisted in Naboo’s armed services with the idea of using the weapon his father had tried to grow him into as an instrument of keeping the peace on this world, hadn’t gone spectacularly well. His assignment to Kylo’s household six months ago, after responding poorly to a jibe about his red hair from a superior, was one case in point.

“Hux?”

Hux felt Kylo’s hand on his jaw, and turned his cheek into the touch.

“I’m glad she sent me to you. Even if it was crazy of her to do it.”

“Me too.” Kylo pressed his forehead to Hux’s. “And if she wants me to go to the market then we’ll go to the market. But we don’t have to do it her way.”

Hux was instantly on the alert, because he knew that tone all too well. It thrilled him, and promised mischief, and very probably some kind of dressing down in the near future from the Senator. But as long as Kylo emerged unscathed, she’d forgive them both. She would forgive them anything, if it brought a smile to the son she still called Ben.

“What then is your way?” Hux asked, pulling away from Kylo to fetch his abandoned cap from the floor.

“Did you know that in the past, the Queen of Naboo would walk among the people dressed as a commoner, while a handmaiden in royal garb drew all the attention? My grandmother changed places with a Royal Handmaiden named Sabe during the Invasion. I don’t know if, historically, the Royal Handmaidens were meant to draw out assassins or just enable those little girl queens to shop for sweets without everyone breathing down her neck.”

“You want me to be a decoy?” Hux asked, deadpan.

Kylo grinned. “I’ve wanted to see you in one of my gowns for a long time.”

Hux opened his eyes wide. “Your gowns won’t fit me.”

“Why not? You’re almost my height. Not as broad across the shoulder, and you have that willowy waist…” Kylo wrapped his hands around Hux’s middle and rubbed against his ribs with long thumbs. Hux swatted at him, but only half seriously. “A cloak will disguise what a slender wraith you are.”

“You don’t think the red hair will be a giveaway? Or my actual face?”

Kylo tugged Hux flush against him. “Head-dress. Make-up. People don’t often look that closely, you know. As long as you look the part.”

“And you?” Hux slipped a hand over the soft fabric at Kylo’s hip to squeeze his backside.

Kylo grinned. “Kylo Naberrie doesn’t go anywhere these days without that personal guard of his.” He nimbly snitched the cap from Hux’s hand and dropped it on his own head, over the obsidian and amethyst circlet. “My own Royal Handmaiden.”

“They know I’m a redhead, Kylo.”

“You know this uniform also has a helmet, Hux.”

Hux laughed and bumped his nose against Kylo’s chin. “Which gown, then?”

“The forest green, I think.”

Hux met Kylo’s thoughtful look with a serious one of his own. “The one you discovered no longer fits you since you’ve been taking more exercise?” He slid his hands up Kylo’s back, underneath the cloak still, to caress Kylo’s shoulders.

Kylo feigned nonchalance. “It seems a waste to not use it, even if it no longer fits me.”

“Fetched it from the trash unit, then?”

“A servobot retrieved it, yes.”

Kylo was very high on his dignity, and Hux smirked at him. “All right then, my noble lord. Dress me like a decoy princess and I’ll buy you some sweets.”

“That’s my darling boy.” Kylo’s generous mouth tilted up in a half smile.

Hux’s heart sang at the endearment. He might be the son of a mass-murderer, a failure in his father’s eyes, a troubled and troublemaking remnant of an obliterated tyranny – but he was Kylo Naberrie’s darling boy, and Kylo was his reprobate prince, and that was all the rationale for living he needed for the immediate future.

*

Kylo’s attention to Hux’s _habiliment_ was both gratifying and distracting. Kylo’s habit of kissing Hux’s pale, freckled skin as he helped his guardsman on with the forest green gown made damned sure the front of it didn’t sit well half the time. Kylo didn’t help that matter much when he insinuated his hand under the garment to use his hand as a cup over Hux’s crotch.

“You’re a bad boy,” Hux reprimanded him, breath catching.

Kylo only hoiked the dress up to kiss Hux’s thigh then smoothed the firm underskirt over Hux’s hips and thighs. The elasticated black fabric pushed back against Hux’s rising interest. The firmer it held him in place – exactly as it was designed to do – the more Hux’s interest… rose.

“Nice, isn’t it?” Kylo teased.

“I see why you’re so fond of this gown,” Hux countered, deflecting, but without much success.

Kylo’s positively voluptuous grin stayed in place as he arranged the gown’s sheathed skirt down Hux’s legs. The silk _crepe de chine_ draped perfectly from Hux’s hips to the floor.

Kylo rose, dabbing fingers to the soft fabric and Hux’s body beneath, before fussing with the cape-like top section, making sure it sat correctly across Hux’s shoulders and arms. The fabric that scalloped over his left elbow was attached to the neck on the right, a pattern reversed on the other side. This ensured Hux’s chest, which was very obviously not Kylo’s chest – not as broad, not as smooth and much more ginger – was hidden.

Over the top of the gown, Kylo settled a floor length cape of deep red and very fine wool. The garment had a high neck and a gauzy front piece that shimmered over the sheath of the _crepe de chine_ gown.

Kylo’s boots were much too large for the slender Hux, but simple slippers of green sufficed for that.

Then Kylo painted Hux’s face, white underneath, green painted over his eyebrows and red marks dotted over his brow and cheeks. The headpiece was a forest green cap from which rose green and black feathers, the latter limned in red.

Hux turned in a circle before the mirror. “I can see why you had that massive hissy fit about it not fitting you,” he said. “I loved you in this.”

Kylo nuzzled the back of Hux’s neck. “Looks better on you.”

Hux refused to agree out loud, but he did agree. He loved the colour. He loved how strangely free it felt to wear skirts instead of trousers. He loved the silky feel of the fabric on his skin. And hell-in-hyperspace, he loved that feeling of combined silkiness and constriction around his hips, backside, abdomen and cock as the fitted slip held his body in check, so as not to ruin the line of the gown. _This kink I did not know I had. But boy, do I have it._

Forcing his mind clear of that stimulation, Hux moved a step or two, checking his appearance in the mirror, and found more things to love: such as how gloriously anonymous he felt, his tell-tale red hair covered.

Kylo was the only one who adored the colour of Hux’s hair. He’d spend lazy mornings running his fingers through its fineness, sometimes sucking on the tips of it, as though he could taste some indefinable quality in it. (And it was not just the hair on Hux’s head that so entranced Kylo, but Hux had better not think of that now, or the underskirt would be put to another stress test.)

It took Kylo less time to prepare. Hux’s uniform trousers were a good fit for him, and he owned a pair of black boots that were regulation enough. The cheeky bastard had a uniform jacket in his size already though – evidence he’d been planning a caper like this for a while – and completed with a shock helmet which encased all the flowing dark hair on his head, with a drop-down visor to obscure the top half of his face as far down as his top lip.

Hux thought Kylo’s distinctive mouth and chin would give them away, but Kylo seemed much too pleased with himself for Hux to want to spoil the fun. And anyway, Hux liked having Kylo’s luscious mouth framed by the helmet.

Kylo took up Hux’s rifle, attached the blaster to his belt and offered his arm to Hux.

“I shall escort you to the markets, my lord,” he said with solemnity.

Hux couldn’t see Kylo’s eyes, but he knew they were laughing, however serious that mouth looked.

“I’d kiss you,” Kylo added, ruining the effect of his serious mouth, “But I’ll smudge the make-up.”

“Smudge it later,” suggested Hux.

*

Hux’s main concern in the market was not the people staring at who they thought was the royal offspring, the son of heroes with the cloud of doubt and rumour tainting his past. It was not those same people giving Kylo-as-guard assessing looks, trying to see through the visor to the son-of-a-red-haired butcher they thought was beneath. He was used to those roles being reversed, but neither was new to him. The people of Theed were uneasy with both of them, though with enough residual faith in their Queen and Senator Organa to tolerate them in the city.

No. Hux’s main concern at present was not to trip over the damned gown. It trailed around his feet and he wasn’t used to it. How Kylo managed it was a mystery, because Kylo usually walked with a step that was as solid as it was graceful. He glanced at Kylo, walking a half pace behind and to the side, keeping a proper guardly eye out for his charge. He was doing that thing that was often hidden by the gowns, but Hux saw whenever Kylo walked naked across the room. The slight inward drag of his left foot.

It made Hux try to picture Kylo as a little boy, walking with that half-coy, unselfconscious walk. Long before he adopted the name Kylo to distance himself from the infamous Ben who had caused so much trouble with his uncle and the trainees, before that unpleasant fellow Snoke had been despatched by Ben’s hot-headed father.

Hux liked to think of Kylo when he was unselfconscious. He was that sometimes, when they were alone; only infrequently while in view of others in his hillside home, and never at all at the court. But now, not being seen as Kylo, that unselfconsciousness was there.

“Do you wish to examine the jewellery, my lord?” Kylo asked him, voice distorted by the microphone in the shock helmet. The headgear was designed for use during security actions and must have looked odd out here, as though they were expecting trouble, but Hux couldn’t begrudge it. That boyish, unselfconscious, left-foot drag made everything worthwhile.

Hux tilted his head the way Kylo did when he was not in the mood to talk but forced to be polite. Kylo recognised the gesture and his shoulders twitched back as though he were suppressing a laugh.

“Through here, my lord,” said Kylo, and he guided Hux through the threshold of a refreshment stall. He helped Hux to sit, flicking the skirts and cloak out to pool gracefully around a chair. Then Kylo ordered varanta nectar and profiteroles Ukio from the flustered Gungan vendor.

Hux cocked his head slightly. He could hear faint squeaking from the back of the room, almost like a baby’s cry. He began to rise, to investigate, but the Otolla Gungan returned with a laden tray.

Kylo said, “My lord would rest alone for a moment, if it please you.” Through the helmet mic, the simple request sounded vaguely sinister.

The Otollan nodded, long earlobes bobbing, and withdrew. Hux noted how the Otollan’s eyes steadfastly did not go to the rear of the room, where the baby-squeaking noise was getting louder.

As soon as he was gone, Kylo took off his helmet and strode towards the sound. Hux tried to twist in his seat to see what he was up to, and when that didn’t help, he rose and tripped over the dress.

He began to fall and then… he stopped. Held at an impossible degree, gravity and momentum ceased to apply to him, until he was set gently back on his seat. While Hux rearranged his gown and his dignity, Kylo bent to something in a box on the floor and scooped it up and into the helmet.

Kylo appeared next to him again, holding his helmet close to his body. The squeaking now came from within the helmet.

“All right?” Kylo asked.

Hux sighed. “I have never been rescued from the consequences of a gown before. I am tolerably humiliated by the experience.”

Kylo looked down at him, sloe-eyes, full mouth quirking in laughter he was quelling with effort.

“If you laugh at me, Kylo Naberrie, I’m going to tell your mother what really happened to her Malreaux roses.”

“You wouldn’t dare!”

“You watch me.”

“All the time.” Kylo’s hunger was avid and unmistakable, and of course Hux instantly forgave him. Kylo was like his father that way. Charming his way out of most of his mischief. It protected him, Hux suspected, from the ways he was too much like his grandfather.

“So are you going to tell me what’s in my helmet?”

Kylo grinned again and drew it away from his body, revealing in the hollow of the shock helmet a small ginger kitten. “It looks like you,” Kylo teased.

The kitten fluffed into a tiny ginger ball of rage and hissed at Kylo.

“Ha!” Hux laughed, “Now it looks like you! Just like you when you were little boy. Or last week, when you found out this gown didn’t fit you any more.”

Kylo had the grace to look abashed, because it really had been a ridiculous tantrum that had ended with gown, shoes and headdress all thrown into the trash, only to be retrieved an hour later by the servobot.

Hux felt bad about making Kylo feel bad. He poked at the kitten with a finger. The kitten shied, but then hissed again, making war with its tiny body and fangs against these outrages.

“Hello there,” Hux cooed at it. “Look at you, ready to take on giants.”

Kylo tickled the kitten’s whiskery cheeks. The kitten, affronted, whirled around in the confines of the helmet and bit its assailant on the finger.

“I like this little murder kitten,” declared Hux, “It’s got good instincts.” He caught up Kylo’s hand and nipped the wounded finger before sucking it into his mouth. He gazed up at Kylo, who was gazing raptly down at him.

“I think we’re done shopping,” said Kylo.

*

The kitten came back to the villa with them, cuddled up against Hux’s chest and shedding ginger fur all over the sumptuous soft crepe cloth of the gown. The Otollan hadn’t taken much convincing to sell it, since it was unregistered and not meant to be on Naboo at all. When Hux commented on this, Kylo just grinned and said he’d talk the import regulators around.

“Who’s a tiny Knight of Ren?” Kylo asked the kitten as he fetched it milk, fish and a tray of soil.

“Who’s gone moof-milker over a cat?” Hux had managed to divest himself of the headpiece and cloak but wasn’t sure how to begin with the gown itself.

“Who called her Millicent?”

Hux conceded that Kylo won that round.

“I shall claim my victory, then,” Kylo declared, shutting Millicent the Murder Kitten and Fluffy Knight of Ren into the refresher and pulling Hux into his arms.

“Do that thing,” Hux murmured huskily between kisses, “With the Force. Do that thing.”

Hux felt his feet leave the floor and he levitated inches above it. Kylo ruffled his fingers through Hux’s red hair, making a lovely mess. He held Hux’s face between his hands and kissed him, smearing make-up between them. Then he bent his knees and, while Hux hovered in the air, removed Hux’s slippers. He slid his hands up Hux’s calves and thighs, pushing the gown up and over Hux’s hips and ribs. Hux let himself be gently manhandled as Kylo peeled the gown over his head and flung it aside.

“Look at you,” murmured Kylo. “Good enough to eat.” He matched word and deed by sliding his mouth over Hux’s right nipple and suckling at it.

Hux’s feet kicked slightly in the air, toes dangling still above the floor tiles. He spread his arms wide, offering himself as an open banquet to his prince, and Kylo licked across Hux’s pale chest to the other nipple, to lick and soft-bite at it, while he carefully pinched the first not with his fingers but a little nudge of the Force.

Hux arched. His feet kicked a little. He grunted. “ _Get this kriffing control slip off me_.”

Kylo kept suckling and Force-tweaking Hux’s nipples, but with his free hand he cupped the bound-down bulge at Hux’s crotch. “What do you say, _pateesa_?”

“Now, Kylo, oh god, _now_!”

Kylo kept Hux suspended and reached down with both hands to pull the underskirt up Hux’s thighs to his waist, leaving him bare in two directions, only a strip of firm black cloth around his slender waist. Hux’s cock, freed from its confines, rose plump and keenly interested.

Kylo slipped a hand between Hux’s legs and Hux spread them so that Kylo cupped his cock and balls with his palm and the fingers of his gloriously large hand reached to his perineum. Kylo squeezed gently, rubbing the soft skin behind Hux’s scrotum with his forefinger, then reaching further to playfully tease at Hux’s entrance.

Hux writhed in the air, trying to thrust against Kylo’s hand. He opened his eyes a fraction, gazing down at Kylo, who was watching his own hand massaging Hux’s crotch. Kylo withdrew his hand slowly, rubbing it all along Hux’s now thick and straining length, and buried his fingers in the tight red curls surrounding it.

“You’re so beautiful,” whispered Kylo, and he tilted his head up to kiss Hux’s mouth. Hux made an undignified, keening sound and claimed the lushness of Kylo’s mouth in turn, burrowing his fingers into Kylo’s long hair.

Kylo wrapped his arms around Hux then, pulling him close, chest to chest, then stood back. Using the Force, he raised Hux higher, almost to the level of the ceiling. Hux spread his arms and legs, on full display, nothing hidden, no shame, all offered.

Kylo nudged his nose along Hux’s length and inhaled perspiration, arousal and need as he unfastened the jacket, the shirt. He kissed Hux’s calves and ankles and feet before removing his boots. He turned Hux slowly in the air and gently bit his darling’s backside before removing the uniform trousers and underwear.

Then, naked and erect and wanting, Kylo stood beneath Hux and opened his mouth to receive the wetness that pearled at Hux’s cockhead and dribbled sweetly down onto his tongue.

Licking his lips, Kylo grinned up at Hux. He licked Hux’s shaft again, and suckled on the crown of him while Hux gasped.

“Are you mine?” Kylo asked, hushed and needy.

“Always, Ky. Just like you’re mine.”

And in the next moment, Hux was on the bed and Kylo was with him, and they were holding to each other, rubbing, licking, kissing, smearing their cocks with fragrant lubricant and slotting their bodies together to rock and thrust. Hux’s make-up was smudged all over their faces, their chests and bellies, their cocks and hips, and even their hair as they clung and undulated together until both were gasping and coming, crying out helplessly.

Afterwards, Hux snuggled close to the sturdy body beside him. He licked at Kylo’s neck and draped his leg over Kylo’s thigh.

“I love it when you do that thing,” he said.

Kylo wrapped both arms around Hux and gathered him close before rolling over, almost totally covering Hux’s body with his own. Hux crooked his free leg and hooked it around Kylo’s waist, and held him tight until Kylo’s suddenly emotional breathing steadied. He stroked Kylo’s beautiful long hair and kissed his cheek.

“I love you,” he said into Kylo’s absurd and absurdly beautiful ear.

“A monster lives in me. I saw it in visions,” said Kylo, almost inaudible, but Hux heard. Hux would always hear him.

“There’s a monster in everyone, _pateesa_ ,” Hux said softly, “Yours is prisoner, just like mine. Those visions will never come to pass. We’ll keep each other safe, I promise.”

Kylo buried his face in Hux’s neck. That noble nose pressed to Hux’s pulse, that wide mouth kissed on his pale skin and suckled it too, marking it. Hux wondered if he was weeping, but then he heard Kylo’s voice inside his head.

_*No. I never cry now that you’re here.*_

_Good. Your eyes are too beautiful for crying._ Hux thought the words, knowing that Kylo would hear.

Hux heard Kylo’s soft laugh but only in his head, and then, _*I love you, too, you know.*_

Hux shifted under Kylo’s weight but didn’t try to escape it. He just kissed Kylo’s cheek and jaw.

From the refresher, they could hear squeaky yet strident demands for attention. Soon, Hux felt laughter ripple through Kylo’s body on top of him.

“Murder Kitten wants to play.”

“It’s _Millicent_. And she can use you as a chew toy, then,” said Hux, kissing Kylo’s biceps now, “I’m done with you for the moment.”

Kylo kissed Hux hard, wrapped a hand around Hux’s butt cheek and squeezed. Then, with a wicked grin, he leapt from the bed and went to retrieve Millicent from the refresher. He fetched damp cloths so that he and Hux could clean themselves up, and found bright sarongs to wrap around their hips and, from somewhere, a ball of probably very expensive wool for Millicent.

For the rest of the afternoon, Kylo and Hux lazed about in bed, playing with the fierce little kitten and working out how they might smuggle in a playmate for her. Furry Knights of Ren, they figured, should always have a friend.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> The underskirt, gown and cloak I used as inspiration for Hux's outfit are [here on my Tumblr](http://221b-hound.tumblr.com/post/145133767180/inspirations-for-my-first-kylux-fanfic-coming)


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